Weeping with Those Who Weep

Romans 12:14-16

Every successive year, this service changes for me. When I began as your pastor eight years ago, I didn’t know any of the names that I read. Today, we remember people I have worked with, shared meals with, laughed with. We remember people who were friends and mentors. Your tears have become mine as well.

• We remember Virginia Markin
• We remember Janelle Earl
• We remember Francis Rutz husband of Joanne
• We remember J. Birney Dibble
• We remember David Kruse husband of Jackie 
• We remember Kay Halloin wife of Robert
• We remember Terry Willkom husband of Susan
• We remember Mary Jean Ambrose
• We remember Theodore Larson husband of Bea

Our scripture today comes from Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapter 12, verses 14-16.

14Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. 15Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. 16Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are.

It sounds strange to say, but I love this service. Yes, it is hard, but there is a simplicity to our purpose today. We are here to honor our saints: to remember what they taught us and to acknowledge that part of them that has become part of us. My sermon is not especially important; what matters today is the lighting of candles and partaking of Holy Communion in the presence of all the saints, past and present. Like I said: simplicity.

And so I chose a very simple text today, the most basic description of the church’s care for each other to be found in scripture: Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep. Caring for each other begins with listening to each other, not just to their words but to their joys and sorrows, then responding by sharing those joys and sorrows with them. It’s that simple – not easy, mind you – but simple. Not everyone here bears a grief of their own, but today we are reminded that your neighbor’s grief is also yours. Their tears, yours. Their hollowness, yours to share, and yours to fill. On this day, surrounded by these candles that each represent a life and innumerable griefs, we are one.

That kind of unity is not so common today, and that’s another reason I have learned to love this service. On this day, our differences do not matter, because here we remember that we share mortality, and all the whips and scorns of time. Today we go beneath the superficial divisions that make up our lives, and as we cling to our common humanity, we remember that we are not so different. Death and grief are great equalizers. 

At least I hope that is still true. As recently as five years ago, I wouldn’t have doubted it. I would have said that just as there are supposedly no atheists in foxholes, there are no partisans in the presence of death. But I’m not so sure today. Increasingly in our society, death has joined everything else in becoming just another bone to quarrel over. We barely register the horror of every new school shooting before we rush to find a way to blame the senseless death of children on the other side. Was the shooter a gun nut? Was the shooter trans? A white male? Republican? Democrat? Whose podcasts did he listen to? Melissa Hortman, a Minnesota lawmaker and her husband are brutally murdered because of their political views, and immediately Twitter is a-buzz with people blaming the other side. It was because of the violent rhetoric of the right. No, the violent rhetoric of the left. Charlie Kirk is brutally murdered for his political views, and again people rush in to use his death to score points before someone else does. And increasingly, people who see someone who has died as a political enemy … respond to their death with rejoicing. What was once a baseline, our common humanity, is being swallowed up by a shared indifference to the very lives of those who disagree with us. Paul tells us to rejoice with those who rejoice – but in our day we have begun rejoicing over those who weep, if they are from a different tribe.

Now I do not think that in these words I have described anyone from this church. I have been talking about larger trends in the public sphere. But trends in public life can creep into the church, so today I call on us to be different. I call on us to view those with whom we disagree – living as well as dead – first in terms of what we share: mortality and grief. Today we weep with those who weep – whoever they are.

And so on this day dedicated to remembering our common life, and our common fate, we light five more candles.

• We light a candle in honor of Melissa and Mark Hortman, of Minnesota.
• We light a candle in honor of Charlie Kirk.
• We light a candle in honor of the 26 students who have been killed in school shootings so far this year
• We light a candle in honor of the 73 police officers who have been killed in the line of duty this year.
• And we light a candle in shared grief, and in shared hope. Kyrie eleison. Lord, have mercy.

We close with a reading from a 17th century Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, John Donne:

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.”